Three Tips for Reading Your Bible This October

THREE TIPS FOR READING YOUR BIBLE THIS OCTOBER

In my last blog post, I challenged our church members to read the Bible every day in the month of October. Reading the Bible is a very important task that Christians should engage in. God wrote a book and speaks to us through it. We neglect the encouragement and edification by neglecting to read our Bibles. Church, let’s pick up and read. Here are three helpful tips to read your Bible this month:

SET A TIME TO READ

We set schedules for everything. We know when we go to work, when we eat, when we pick up our children, when soccer games are, when date night is. Let’s set a time when we will read our Bibles every day. When there is no set time to read the Word, it will often fall to the wayside in the business of life. We cannot neglect the reading of the Word, for it is food for our soul.

I love Peter’s response after Jesus asks the disciples if they are leaving after Jesus’ hard teaching, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). When we neglect to read the Bible, we neglect the words of eternal life. In an earlier post, I detailed the benefits of putting down my phone for an extended amount of time throughout the day:

“There I sat, wrestling with doubts of missed conversations on my phone, when I’m missing the ultimate conversation with God through His Word. Silly me.”

PICK A FRIEND TO READ WITH

Not only is it beneficial to read the Scriptures with another individual for accountability sake but also for the sake of mutual encouragement. Your friend may have perspective and insight on a text that perhaps you lack. There is nothing better than treasuring the Word over a cup of coffee with another brother and allowing that brother to preach the Gospel to your soul.

Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” Paul encourages believers to let the word of Christ dwell richly, yet not isolation but in mutual friendship. There are 59 “one-another” verses in the Bible. We would be wise to heed their wisdom and seek other brothers and sisters out as we journey to read the Bible.

INSTALL THE ESV BIBLE APP

Instead of browsing Facebook or Pinterest for ten minutes, open the ESV Bible app and read through a Psalm. You can download it for both iPhone and Android. As believers, there is not a more practical way to read the Scriptures as we go throughout our daily business. The app allows you to take notes next to your favorite Scriptures and syncs well with the desktop version.

I hope these three tips will help you as participate in the challenge to read your Bible’s everyday. J.C. Ryle wrote these words over two hundred years ago that still hold weight today:

“Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible reading. By reading that book we may learn what to believe, what to be, and what to do; how to live with comfort, and how to die in peace. Happy is that man who possesses a Bible! Happier still is he who reads it! Happiest of all is he who not only reads it, but obeys it, and makes it the rule of his faith and practice!”